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Author Topic: Respond to the last movie you watched  (Read 683949 times)

Bondo

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #2720 on: October 18, 2018, 08:37:42 PM »
Padman (2018)

I think I'm overdue for another Bollywood marathon. I'm not entirely sure if this would have merited inclusion though. In one way it is a noble enough film, based on a real-life story of a man who takes it on himself to find a way to produce inexpensive sanitary pads for women, since the price makes them prohibitive in what is still a rather poor country, leading to a lot of preventable suffering for women. When you add onto that a lot of social stigma about uncleanliness, and it is just a lot of punishment for something that is a natural process for women.

Yet its social benevolence is darkened by a bit of a problematic frame. Lakshmi seems clearly autistic, between his intuitive grasp of machinery and his complete lack of grasp of social decorum. Once he gets his mind set on his mission of creating affordable sanitary pads, he hones in on it to ridiculous ends in pursuit, no matter the cost to himself and those around him. Not great that his wife, mother and sisters, whose safety drives him, basically come off as hysterics and religious yokels in need of his heroic white knight routine. This gets somewhat absolved, less because it is in theory based on fact and more because in the second half it is a woman that largely saves him. Maybe it is PC culture gone too far, but it just feels a bit wrong for a man to be the central force of a story about something so feminine.

P.S. There are only like three songs in this so it seems only tangentially a Bollywood film.

1SO

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #2721 on: October 18, 2018, 11:52:01 PM »

Halloween (2018)
"He's waited for this night... he's waited for me... I've waited for him..."

I'm starting to think I should keep this image handy because it applies to more than just Incredibles 2. Putting together my thoughts, I want to avoid Spoilers for now but the movie was constantly slapping me in the face with its bad ideas. (Podcast Journalists? Really?) There isn't a good scene for about 30 minutes, during which time DGG sets up this film's crop of dead teenagers while attempting an honest portrayal of trauma victims. (Victims who have to deal with stupid, pushy Podcast Journalists.)

The middle continues to show a lack of understanding or caring about what made the first film work, but there are also a couple of decent scenes. There's also a bizarre side trip/twist that sits high on the franchise's pile of dumb ideas. Then comes the ending, which isn't great, but after all the disappointment that came before, it's really effective. There's an edge of the seat tension and a couple of moments that earn the cheers and gasps they got from the crowd and from me. The film goes out on a high note, I just wish getting there offered more than a couple of good scenes.
Rating: ★ ★

Dave the Necrobumper

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #2722 on: October 19, 2018, 01:30:56 AM »
How was Jamie Lee Curtis's performance?

1SO

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #2723 on: October 19, 2018, 09:26:27 AM »
As written, the character is inconsistent. Her decisions and reactions are often based more on the needs of the script instead of the story moving to her decisions. As much debate as there is about Mark Hamill's Luke Skywalker all the years later, Hamill made it seem like this was still the same person. I saw little of Curtis picking up Laurie Strode again. Her brief bit in Halloween H2O I didn't have this issue. So instead, I'm watching her because she's the only person smart enough to know what it would take to put Michael Myers down.

philip918

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #2724 on: October 22, 2018, 06:02:19 PM »
After Hours (1985)

What a curveball (in retrospect) from Scorsese, and boy do I wish he made a few more films in this vein. A ton of credit is due to Joseph Minion's screenplay, which sets up a host of oddball scenarios and characters and creates a web of surreal setups and payoffs. Griffin Dunne is an actor whose filmography I've somehow managed to almost entirely miss. Really liked his deadpan reactions. I haven't been catching up on horror films as I'd hoped this month, but this still seemed very fitting. It's certainly anxiety inducing.

Smoke

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #2725 on: October 22, 2018, 10:11:02 PM »
^good flick!

jdc

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #2726 on: October 29, 2018, 01:41:50 AM »
Bohemian Rhapsody

While I have tried to get my wife to appreciate rock music, she just really is not into it with a few exceptions. The different versions of CSI have gotten her to appreciate at least 3 The Who songs. And she can tolerate Pink Floyd, there isn't too much outside of those that she likes, including Queen.

But this came up as a trailer before A Star is Born and well, the trailer made it look exciting enough that she wanted to go the following day.  This seemed a pretty much by the numbers Bio-pic of Freddy Mercury with the band being mostly in the background. As time and norms have passed, there is not that seems shocking by today's standard and maybe it was just Freddy's personality, he didn't seem like he struggled with how he was perceived by the public at the time.

There were a few nice moments that explained the originals behind certain songs like We Will Rock You for example. The film did help turn my wife around on Queen though, as soon as we got home she wanted to watch the Live Aid performance as well as one of the concert Blu-rays.  Having just watched the film and then the actual performance, Rami Malek's performance at Live Aid is pretty much spot on as well as his performance overall.

My one big complaint would be how the made fun of the song the drummer wrote, I am in Love with my Car.  It is short, it rocks and deserves more respect:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_NeqJlrINc
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philip918

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #2727 on: November 02, 2018, 02:18:15 PM »
Flew across country earlier this week so knocked off a handful of 2018 films I'd missed:

Ready Player One

Watched an hour and still wasn't invested. Film lacked a pulse and main character didn't hook me.

Incredibles 2

Almost didn't finish this one either, but glad I did. Pales in comparison to the first, but this was pretty fun. They keep the family apart for far too long. The only true bright spot is Edna.

Tomb Raider

Indiana Jones without the charm, sense of humor, or sense of adventure. Vikander is fine, but her character is underserved. All steely resolve and CGI stunts. A little humor would have gone a long way.

Isle of Dogs

I love Wes Anderson. I already barely remember this movie. It's a step even farther from his usual remove and really suffers for it.

Love, Simon

The best of the bunch, though I still had 20 minutes left when we landed (so hopefully it sticks its landing). Thought it was charming, lots of good characters, good high school storylines, etc.

Also caught:

A Star is Born

Pretty good. Like every version before it the first 30 minutes are the best and culminate with the star-turn, which this one pulls off very nicely. Was disappointed how middle of the road their relationship was. The Streisand version is not very good, but at least it had some real conflict between the characters - I especially like when she catches him in bed with a reporter who was there to interview her, but she doesn't duck the interview, she still sits down with the woman and crafts her own narrative. You might say this version is a little... sha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-hallow.

smirnoff

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #2728 on: November 02, 2018, 08:05:24 PM »
Tomb Raider

Indiana Jones without the charm, sense of humor, or sense of adventure. Vikander is fine, but her character is underserved. All steely resolve and CGI stunts. A little humor would have gone a long way.

It's hard to imagine them making this movie without some comedy... especially these days.

The trailer makes it look like what I would expect.

It would be neat to see them take a big name franchise like this and freshen it up by forgoing all the blockbuster spectacle and instead put it through a found footage horror lens. Tomb Raider, as a concept, seems well suited to found footage style film making. Tight spaces, underground somewhere, dusty, etc. Like the film As Above, So Below is a perfect setting. The catacombs beneath Paris, sign me up! That was an excellent film and it's not hard to imagine it as a gritty, low budget, non-superhero version of a Tomb Raider adventure.

Bondo

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #2729 on: November 02, 2018, 09:47:41 PM »
22 July (2018)

One can always be skeptical of films based on recent traumatic events. It is so easy for a reenactment of tragedy to feel like exploitation. Yet Paul Greengrass has made a career out of carefully walking that line with Bloody Sunday, United 93 and Captain Phillips. In the first quarter of this film that depicts the actual events of the titular date, I felt like Greengrass had failed here. It is a real blessing that the bulk of the film relates to the aftermath. Still, I can't say this ever added up to much for me.

One thing I can say is it feels timely in light of another spate of white supremacist violence here in the U.S. Even though it is the most potent threat to America right now, it somehow has been undersold as such, while a few hundred women and children 1000 miles away get all the attention. Stories that key in on the seriousness of this ideology and its threat are welcome. In that vein, I'd recommend Imperium well before I'd recommend this.